Alex's swim journal

200s Day; 400 IM PR

It's been a 6K weekend already. Last night I got in late for an EZ 2100, all freestyle. The Y was nearly deserted, but I had to swim off a pint. Probably could have taken the day completely off, but didn't want 2/1 to go by without doing something. Ground Hog day would have to be something more extraordinary. 2/2: Anthony's birthday... we celebrated by going out for a burger at lunch. Swimming this afternoon with a burger in my belly... pretty out of the ordinary!

I needed to have a good distance day, but I did not want to overdo it. I woke up this morning feeling really tired, and since doing a couple of 6000-yard+ Saturdays in a row I figured I could hold back this week. I still wanted to do 4-5K. What to do? Since most of the week I've been doing 25-, 50-, 100-yard segments of 200 IM... trying to increase speed, I decided on straight-up 200s, with a smattering of longer IMs. Here was the plan I finally went to the Y with this afternoon after the hamburger went down:

*I've probably done fewer than a dozen 400 IMs lifetime, so I was super stoked about breaking 7:00. My free leg was pretty strong (1:28), which means that my endurance is getting better on the strokes (I wasn't dog-a$# tired after 100 of each!) and, though the times on the strokes weren't blazing, they also weren't terrible... breast is now definitely the slowest. So, actually, the 400 IM PR was not that surprising... I've only been putting the pieces together for about a month and I should be improving it all the time. What did surprise me was the two 200 frees in the mid 2:40s in the second set. That's pretty close to a PR in 200 free for me and I haven't been doing 200 frees very much lately. The 200 Back in 3:29 surprised me too... I've been doing that in 2:40s-2:50s of late, so my technique and endurance is getting a lot better in that stroke. A couple of months ago my back stroke was ok, but very slow turnover... I would usually give myself 5:00 to finish a 200 back in my warm-ups and cool-downs, for example.